Wow, guys! Really??
Why so harsh on the high school girl? She ran hard, something went wrong, and she gave it everything she had to finish for her team and coach.
I saw the same thing happen in high school. Our team's top runner, after having just won conference and having set a new conference and school record was looking like the most likely contender for the state title. We were also hoping for our first team championship in school history.
The state meet started and our top runner was running in a pack of 3 (where she should have been). I was behind her in 5th or 6th place. I saw her start to fall behind the pack around 2.5 miles. Then I noticed she was sort of shaky, jogging so slow that it looked like she was jogging in place. I passed her, as did others, and everyone could tell something was wrong. We tried to encourage her, but she looked pretty disoriented. I finished in 3rd and my teammate in 4th. We turned back to see her, waited nervously for a little while, and when we finally saw her near the finish she looked awful. Within 10-20 meters from the finish line, she fell down. Her mom rushed out to grab her, but someone (i don't remember who) encouraged her to crawl across. She did crawl across the line to score for our team, & without her efforts we would never have won our first state championship.
To this day I don't know what happened to her during the race. She was running a reasonable race and then just broke down physically. It happens sometimes.
Anyone remember the great high school runner Danielle Tauro or the Footlocker Champion Julia Stamps? Sometimes shit happens. But, good for those who do what they can to finish for the team.
I know it meant a lot to us at the time to have that State Championship. Not many of us went on to superb college or professional running, including our collapsed teammate. Having that 1st championship victory meant a lot to our beloved coach, too. He could not have been prouder. As it turned out, he died some 5 years later of a heart attack.